


KIDDIE TABLE

by inuyasha (laurakinnie)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Homunculus, Dark Comedy, Gen, Homunculus Alphonse Elric, Homunculus Edward Elric, Human Experimentation, Miscarriage, lust actually likes havoc so she joins the good side ssh, lust n havoc level sex jokes, they r cousins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakinnie/pseuds/inuyasha
Summary: Trisha is sick for years. She’s sick when she meets Van Hohenheim. She’s sick when they fall in love. She’s sick when they try to conceive, blood and guts trailing down her thighs.“Give me my son back,” she says, her voice would be hoarse even if she hadn’t been screaming.(Or: Ed and Al and their terrible family learn to be human and save the world.)
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric & Homunculi, Edward Elric & Homunculi, Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Edward Elric & Team Mustang, Jean Havoc/Lust
Comments: 45
Kudos: 226





	1. MEET THE IN-LAWS

**Author's Note:**

> so this is actually a combination of 2 different fma fics i had written?? so the tone shift is wild but honestly that’s typical for me

Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc shows up to Falman’s apartment warming party with a girl fitting neatly under his right arm. 

Breda groans. “Havoc, really? Again?”

Havoc has the decency to look ashamed, though it’s more directed at the girl than the rest of Mustang’s command. “Hey listen, I like this one. Her name’s Solaris; Solaris, this is Breda.”

In “I’m A Serial Dater And Can’t Keep A Relationship Longer Than A Month,” this means: _Don’t worry baby, I love you and I’m changing my manwhore ways. See, I’m introducing you to my friends! Basically reformed!_

“Havoc’s told me _all_ about you,” Solaris drawls. There are at least seven different innuendos layered in both her voice and body language. Breda turns a different shade of red for every single one of them. In IASDACKARFLTAM, this means _I know literally nothing about you and do not care. I’m getting fucked tonight. Eat shit._

“I brought a present to liven up the place,” Solaris says in the same tone. It manages to convey both that _yes she’s very sexy_ and _yes she thinks this apartment is a piece of garbage decorated by rotting wood—_ Which it is. Falman, being a severely underpaid Anestrian soldier, puts free stuff at a higher priority than stupid things like pride _,_ so he graciously introduces himself and puts the gift on a couple of boxes serving as a table. 

“Honestly I didn’t think to unpack, seeing as you lot are probably going to spend tonight destroying my apartment,” Falman admits. “Sorry that this has to be your first impression of me but, you know.”

In IFWH, or I’m Friends With Havoc, this means: _This is probably your only impression of me anyway. Please drink the cheapest booze I have._

“Fuery is coming with Hawkeye and the Colonel. He can’t drive yet, so they’re heading to the west end to pick him up.”

Solaris nudges Havoc with her elbow, which takes exactly zero effort because it’s already in contact with his stomach. “You didn’t tell me that there would be _kids_ at this party.”

“Ah, he’s not a _kid_ -kid, he’s twenty-something, just keeps forgetting to take the test. I’m sure if he really wanted to drive around the city no one would give him shit for it, being in the military and all.” 

“Oh, yes,” Solaris says, “I certainly—“

The door slams open and into the adjacent wall, rebounding back just far enough to show the hole left from the doorknob smashing through the wood. Falman visibly loses three years off his life. He’s really not that much older than the rest of them, but his patience for absolute fucking nonesense is in the negatives, so he looks about fifty. Havoc has forty cenz on him snapping and becoming a berserker, and Fuery has fifty on him giving up and going with it like Hawkeye. It’s a sure bet— no human can ever be like Hawkeye. 

“We’re here, assholes!” Says the youngest ever State Alchemist, shadowed by the tallest ever thirteen year-old. They come clanking in with their synchronized metal limbs. 

“It’s, uh, comfortable,” says Al in his high-pitched echo. “Love what you’ve done with the place. Lots of boxes.”

Havoc groans. “Solaris this is Edward and Alphonse Elric. That tiny one is the Fullmetal Alchemist.”

Edward stares. The three other military officers stare at Edward. Alphonse doesn’t have eyes, but his head is pointed at Solaris, who is looking back at the brothers. Havoc called Ed _tiny_ , to his _face_ , and the room is quiet. 

This is when, per IASDACKARFLTAM code, Solaris should either emphasize how awesome it is that Havoc works with such a high-profile character, or lean into the kid angle and pull a nights worth of baby making allusions until they cut the bullshit and just go for it. The five of them are actually giving her the silence to get her piece in, which is a courtesy never afforded to Havoc’s fleeting girlfriends. 

Instead, Solaris smiles like Mustang sometimes does when he’s at a meeting with the brass and they need to be reminded that central is only still inhabitable because he doesn’t want Elysia to smell the bodies. No one draws a gun, but the team of three outside the open door (Fuery and Mustang carrying, Hawkeye directing) drops the couch into the regrettably fragile floorboards. 

“I _just_ got this apartment,” Falman whimpers. 

“I got you a welcome mat,” Fuery offers, like the Hawkeye-In-Training he is. “It should cover the holes.”

“Thanks.”

Solaris takes a step forward and away from Havoc which is probably the most physical distance they’ve had in the three days they’ve been dating. “So nice to meet you, I’m Solaris.”

Ed coughs something in Horrible Teenager that could be interpreted as “ _Sure_ you are” and Al laughs awkwardly in his most metallic voice and says “Nice to meet you!” way too fast for comfort.

By the end of the night (or nine pm, when Hawkeye calls a taxi to bring the boys back to their long-term hotel room so the rest of them can wreck their livers) the resident alchemists have successfully destroyed and transmuted and re-transmuted the apartment so it barely looks like three assholes got into a contest about whose alchemical style is best for household decorations. At least Falman’s landlord probably can’t sell the apartment to anyone else— there’s no point in evicting him now. 

Solaris acts exactly as she’s expected except for the part where Havoc’s dates usually run screaming. Havoc is making actual heart eyes that are only seventy-five percent because of her tits. Mustang resigns himself to calling Hughes about the potential security risk a somewhat-serious girlfriend would pose to his team. 

Solaris sticks around long enough that the female populace of Eastern Command start to get depressed. The secretary Havoc’s been on-again-off-again sleeping with hasn’t brushed her hair in days. Madame Christmas calls Mustang to ask if Havoc’s still alive. 

“It’s been two weeks, if that,” Mustang groans like he doesn’t know the exact numbers. “About how much of my subordinate’s paycheck goes to you and your girls?”

Madame Christmas laughs “Don’t complain, it’s money towards your birthday card.”

Six months in, it becomes Mustang’s problem. Not that it wasn’t already Mustang’s problem— the position of the _sun in the sky_ is Mustang’s problem, but he usually doesn’t have to actively resolve it.

Hughes calls from a secure line: “Havoc asked me about long term relationships. _Havoc.”_

“Jean? We’re talking about the same guy, right?”

There’s no sound to indicate Hughes nodding, but Mustang knows he does. “Yeah, and I’d be happy for him if I didn’t dig any deeper into her after our talk, but I’m _me_ , so.”

“What’d you find?”

“Her records hold up; she was born near Briggs, moved to Central when she was six and moved to East City a few months ago. Broke a few bones when she was nine. It’s just that she lived in Central in 1904, during the Aerugonian Flu, and there’s no record of her checking in at the hospital that year or the next.”

1904 was the year Trisha Elric died in the Aerugonian Flu epidemic. It’s also the year at least eighteen thousand other Amestrians died from it. It became mandatory for Amestrian metropolitan citizens, due to their proximity to hospitals and to each other, to check in with military doctors at least once during the height of the disease. These doctors were mostly research-based alchemists, and managed to find a cure fast enough to save most of the more wealthy areas. These doctors also never left their cities, preferring their cushy, state-funded lifestyle to the dirt of outer-ring Amestris. Trisha Elric died well after the cure had already been discovered.

Mustang doesn’t ask “You’re sure?” because apart from the _“Jean?”_ earlier, he doesn’t ask Hughes useless questions. What he does ask is: “Is she a threat?”

“Everyone’s a threat, Roy,” Hughes laughs. “Just depends what kind. Right now she’s a security threat, and a national threat, and a regional threat, and—“

“Motive?”

“Illegal immigrants don’t usually have papers as well-forged as she does, and even if an alchemist did the forgery they usually don’t have the idea to add in fake medical records to make their story more concrete. Spies don’t usually have papers this good either, and Drachma doesn’t have alchemists, but there’s always traitors or even _Creta_ , if the Briggs part is just to throw us off.”

“Xing? They have alkahestry.” Solaris doesn’t look or sound Xingese, but she could be a few generations removed from a Xingese relative or even just have a grudge against Amestris strong enough to work with them. 

“Xing doesn’t have the motive, too focused on internal affairs and too far from Amestris.”

“Then who has anything to gain from spying on my office?” No one should know of their plans for Amestris, before or after the spy was sent, Havoc is too good to leak even to a warm body. Without the treason, as much as it pains Mustang to admit, he’s not even in a powerful enough position to be worth spying on. 

“I think she’s from Central,” Hughes says. Breathes in. “And I think she’s watching Fullmetal.”

Maes Hughes is never wrong. 

* * *

  
Three weeks after the first night, Ed finds his second-favorite cousin when he comes back to his hotel room to a locked bathroom and running water.

“I’m taking a bath!” Lust calls through the door. 

“Like _fuck,”_ Ed yells back. “Put some clothes on and get the fuck out!”

Ed’s third-favorite cousin tugs on his coat, and he jumps about two feet Because _fuck how didn’t I see him there—_ “Ed smells good! Can I eat him, Lust? Can I?”

Ed, covered in the blood of innocent farm animals from his last mission, smells like a restaurant trash bin. Gluttony’s mouth has got to be the second most toxic place on earth save for Mustang’s mind. 

“Please don’t,” Al begs, rushing through the doorway, putting up a Do Not Disturb on the knob, and locking it behind him. Gluttony pouts. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see Lust!” Gluttony says.

“Explain further, please.”

Gluttony goes on about how Lust has had no time for him recently, hanging out with her new human pet. 

“Spy mission!” Lust yells. “You know that I can’t go against Father’s orders.”

“But you do it _all the time!_ We’re doing it _right now!”_ Gluttony whines.

Al puts his face in his hands— meaning he takes his face off and holds it in exasperation. “And you decided to have your reunion here? When you guys literally own Amestris?”

Lust opens the door to the bathroom, towel wrapped loosely around her body but really only covering the most X-rated areas. Eyes are quickly averted and the faces that can go red. “It was my idea to come here, since we need to talk anyway. Gluttony tracked me here because he missed me.”

“I did!” 

Lust pats Gluttony’s bald head. “I’m sorry for abandoning you for so long. I’m sure there’s a small town around the border we can… visit.”

Gluttony cheers, but Ed flinches. “Are you plotting fucking _mass murder_ right in front of us?”

“Oh? Did you not want the heads up?” Lust drawls. “If we buy the train tickets in packs of four we get a family discount.”

Ed screams and pulls on his own hair. He stares at Lust in a way that hopefully conveys all the terrible things he wants to do to her stone and _would_ if he wasn’t covered in the remains of livestock. “I hate you _so fucking much._ I’m taking the shower.”

Once everyone is sufficiently clean, they gather around the coffee table— Ed and Al on one side, Lust on the other. Gluttony is off playing the treasure hunt game Lust invented shortly after Ed got out of the shower, with the aim of finding “a picture of Pride in baby clothes.” 

Lust sprawls out across the couch, tossing her limbs artfully over the cushions because she is physically incapable of existing in a way that doesn’t scream _stare at my boobs. Do it. You know you want to._ Being that Ed and Al are 1. minors and 2. related to her, this has no effect on them except for annoyance. Ed leans forwards, sneering. “What do you think you’re doing with Havoc, _Solaris.”_

“Straight to the point? How _boring,”_ Lust sighs. “We can’t all be pleasant to be around, I suppose.”

“You literally make me want to eat glass every time I’m around you.”

Al readjusts in his seat. “Huh. That’s an idea.”

Lust pouts. “All this from my favorite baby cousins?” 

“Cut the shit,” Ed growls. “Why’s Uncle got such an interest in Colonel Bastard’s office, huh? You’ve spent literally every day with blondie since you started this shit, so it’s gotta be important.”

“Simple. I’m dating him.”

Shut down. Reboot. In unison: “Eh?”

Lust rolls her eyes, tilting her head up as she does so because _every single fucking movement_ just _has_ to reveal more of her skin. “It’s not that hard to understand. I like this human. You two are going to help me keep him and not act like you want to kill me every time I’m around.”

“After the way you treated Greed for his Chimeras?” Al asks. “This seems rather hypocritical of you.”

“Greed’s Chimeras are ugly. Havoc’s gorgeous and good at sex.”

Ed and Al shriek at the same time and try to cover each other’s (maybe nonexistent) ears. Ed glares at her. “God, I hate talking to you.”

“Sure, but you’re going to help me anyway, aren’t you?”

Al straightens you. “Why should we? You’ll just kill him in the end.” 

“I will _not.”_ Lust growls— she sounds so much unlike herself that the brothers actually flinch back. “I _want_ him. I’ll kill anyone who tries to take him.”

There’s a beat or so of silence before Ed shakes his head. “Lust and Greed aren’t really that different after all, huh?”

It’s Lust’s turn to flinch back now, but Ed doesn’t stop. “We’ll help you, but if you hurt him it’s your _stone.”_

Lust swallows. “Pleasure doing business with you, boys.”

The door swings open and slams against the wall so hard it shudders and falls off. “Lust! Lust, I found it!”

The three of them freeze before remembering what the target of the game was. “Holy shit—“ Ed says before they all race over to see. It’s probably the happiest they’ve been to see Gluttony in _years._

  
  



	2. FAMILY HISTORY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not rlly funny but, exposition!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw miscarriages, medical malpractice, death, gore, violence, sickness, and calling greed a stripper like in a derogatory way also babies cursing

Trisha is sick as long as anyone’s known her. She’s sick when she meets Van Hohenheim. She’s sick when they fall in love. She’s sick when they fail to conceive, blood and guts trailing down her thighs.

“Give me my son back,” she says. Her voice would be hoarse even if she hadn’t been screaming.

Hohenheim is a Doctor as long as anyone’s known him. He’s been one since Xerxes, since he decided it was the only way to equivocate for the deaths of his countrymen. He’s seen miscarriages happen to other people. Trisha Elric is just another person, but when she refuses God he’ll refuse Them with her. 

He cleans up. She passes out. He carries her to their bed, covers her in their sheets, heads to his study. The Elric house is silent for months.

It’s broken when Trisha— who forgets when exactly she sat down at the kitchen table but she hasn’t moved for at least an hour and hasn’t eaten anything either— hears Hohenheim calling her name from the basement, yelling that she should “Come down, Trisha, you need to see this!”

Hohenheim’s hair has gotten long, tangled, matted. She loves his hair, braids it for him in the mornings, trims it every third Saturday. It’s been nine and her scissors rust in the bathroom drawer. 

His hair is bloody now. So’s his arms, chest, and legs. He’s kneeling in the middle of a chalk circle— she recognizes the symbols for water, for electricity, and gets lost in the red pools that cover the rest of it. She’s already thinking of chemicals, of starches, of what it’ll take to get the blood out of the floor. 

“It’s him, Trisha,” Hohenheim says, and at the epicenter of the dark stains is a wad of blankets. It is silent in his arms, silent when he hands it to her, silent when she brushes the fabric away to see the bright red face and golden eyes. “It’s our son.”

The townspeople have always known the Elrics as odd. Trisha has a northern accent, and Resembool is the southernmost town in Amestris before Ishval. She is beautiful, kind, and living with an unmarried man much older than she. Hohenheim has a weird name and weirder alchemical hobbies. He helps his neighbors make fast repairs, and populates Dolan’s bar almost every weeknight. When he is not drinking, he is “researching”— a word that makes Miss Pinako groan and buy him a pint anyway. They are harmless— good neighbors!— but weird. 

Hohenheim hasn’t been to Dolan’s in what Dolan himself calls “forever,” and so when he finally gets to showing up he gets his first pint on the house.

“I missed my favorite regular,” Dolan says. “Miss Pinako’s been drinking double to make up for your time off.”

Pinako lifts a glass about as big as herself, nods her head, and then finishes it off.

“You’ve shrunk,” Hohenheim notes. 

“Not my liver,” Pinako counters. “Also, you’re paying.”

“Hey now,” Hohenheim holds up his empty palms. “Go easy, I have another mouth to feed.”

The bar, full Monday through Sunday and humid with noise, goes quiet until it doesn’t. Then it’s loud with “Damn, Hohenheim!” and “You better buy Trisha a ring quick, huh?” 

Pinako comes to their doorstep a day or two later with her son and daughter-in-law, and Trisha has so rarely seen her in the daytime that after two years of knowing her she only just realizes Pinako’s eyes are green. They are staring heavily at the baby in her arms. “Um.”

“You miscarried early during your last pregnancy. I treated you,” Urey Pinako says from behind his mother. “You definitely couldn’t have had a baby.”

“Um,” Trisha echoes.

The Rockbells sit at a newly-transmuted side of their kitchen table, with newly-transmuted chairs and newly-curious eyes. Hohenheim and Trisha sit at their normal, coffee-stained seats with the latter still holding her son. 

“Trisha and I—” Hohenheim chokes.  _ Trisha lost our first and he could’ve been beautiful and this isn’t him but he is ours just the same and you can’t tell anyone please— _

Trisha shakes her head. “I’m too sick to carry full-term. Hohenheim made him. His name is Ed.”

Urey’s wife coughs. “Hohenheim did  _ what?”  _

“Hohenheim is an alchemist. He is capable of a great many miracles. He gave me my son,” Trisha says. Trisha is very Northern in the way she speaks and expects to be understood. Pinako is very Amestrian in the way she beans Hohenheim with a wrench. 

“Human transmutation is alchemy’s biggest crime, you dumbass!” Pinako yells. “Anyone who thinks about it long enough will remember Trisha hasn’t been pregnant long enough to have a kid! If we reported you to the government, you’d be arrested at the  _ least _ and your kid would be taken and experimented on!”

A knife lands on the table, central to Pinako’s seat. “It’s a good thing you won’t say anything then,” Trisha says, tucking her arm back under the table.

Urey and his wife check up on Ed, declare that he is a healthy child, if a little on the small side— and haven’t you noticed Trisha hiding out lately? She’s very sick, and not even married. You can imagine the kind of stress she’s under. 

Winry comes soon after, and although Ed grows slowly (a symptom of his early birth, of course) and is far too smart for his age (a symptom of being Van Hohenheim’s child) he acts like a normal kid with her. Alphonse comes later, when Hohenheim wakes to harsh metal pressed to his neck and electricity crackling and “Make me another.” 

It’s how he knows Trisha loves him. If she didn’t, she would not have used a dull knife, and there would be blood instead of bruises. 

(The problem is that he leaves. The main events are unavoidable, there was nothing Hohenheim could have done that would have saved her, but they only could have known that if he was there.)

“Why are you sick, Mommy?” Alphonse asks. He has his father’s gold-metal eyes, just like Ed. His hair is slightly paler, slightly more genetic variation, slightly more human. 

Trisha sighs, and slightly more concise than when Ed asked years ago, she answers. “In Drachma, we are required to spend at least five years in the military. I was very good at my job, and the scientists wanted to make me better. Instead, they did this. I met your father while searching for the cure. He’s a very good Doctor, and one day he’s going to make me better.”

Ed huffs, six years old looking like four and still the biggest brat Trisha’s ever met. “He better hurry up back here then.”

He doesn’t— in fact, nothing is as slow as the years in which Trisha  _ wastes _ . She loses her fingers, so she grips with her fists. She loses her legs, and then her arms. And finally, once the epidemic hits, her life.

What happens in the meanwhile isn’t important. They raise themselves, they go and live with their (terrifying) teacher, they learn the secrets of alchemy as if they too were born into a cycle and not made into suffering, and they bring their mother back to life— for a moment.

The thing in the circle is living torment, and it’s dying as Alphonse is ripped away, as Edward is bleeding out— they bring their mother back just to watch her sons die. 

Ed saves them both, somehow, but it costs Al his body and Ed two of his limbs. They don’t grow back like they should, likely because of divine influence. It’s not that they’re missing anything, it’s that the things that were before simply don’t exist anymore. 

“Why not our souls?” Ed asks the open air. The citizens of Xerxes were infinitely more valuable than their physical forms.

“Because they would have wanted that,” Al answers. Truth takes equally, but never alleviates suffering— all their multitudes of souls want to be free. Truth wouldn’t dare do them that much of a favor.

It’s only after the worst day of their lives that they meet the worst people in the world.

“Wow, you guys are stupid.”

“The fuck are you?” Ed yells from his wheelchair. 

The dark haired, leather clad intruder in their kitchen laughs. “Haha, the baby said fuck.  _ Man _ , you guys are messed up, huh? What kind of homunculus brings their fake mom back to life. Did you  _ actually _ care about her?”

“How the  _ fuck  _ do you know about us—“

“Of  _ course _ we love her!” Al says from his tin prison. “Who the fuck is a male stripper that  _ broke into our house  _ to ask about her! Get the fuck out of here!”

“ _ Wow _ does your voice not suit you.” Ten points to the stripper! Al is under thirteen years old and over six feet! Of course it’s weird! But fuck that guy anyway, Al curses when he fucking wants to curse, and right now he  _ fucking wants to curse.  _ His brother is in a wheelchair, so protecting him is priority, but he  _ also  _ needs to beat the shit out of this man who just called his mom  _ fake  _ and get him out of their house. It’s a multi-step problem. 

The stripper straightens up, waves the back of his hand in front of their faces— ouroborus, the same one Ed and Al have hidden on their bodies (in Al’s case, it makes up his blood seal). “You can call me Greed, and to answer your questions… well, a little lizard of mine saw your tats while you were fucking around with hoses in Dublith.  _ Kind of  _ embarrassing for you, if you were trying to keep those secret.”

Fuck how hot Dublith is, also fuck how tempting sprinklers are. Ed growls. “What do you want from us?”

“What do I want?” Greed laughs. “ _ Everything,  _ I want money, I want power, I want booze, I want— well, you two are a little too young for that part. Losers. But what I want from  _ you _ is to know how a homunculus can have both alchemy  _ and _ human emotions.”

Al moves to stand in front of his tiny, wheelchair bound brother who was even still trying to climb out of his Granny-issued prison to fight this guy. “Why should we help  _ you?”  _

“Easy,” Greed explains, “you come with me, and  _ I  _ tell you what’s going on with this country. You really need to keep up with the family drama,  _ cousins.” _

_ “Excuse me?”  _ Ed screeches, finally falling out of his wheelchair.

And that is how Ed and Al meet their new favorite relative, for the definite worse of the Amestrian government. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IK THIS IS LATE N AWFUL N BAD BUT. SCHOOL AT LEAST I UPDATED 💀💀

**Author's Note:**

> this is largely unedited so if anyone wants 2 help i mean


End file.
